Advanced Planning Group

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About Us

What We Do

Advanced Planning Group helps advisors increase revenues without increasing costs by serving high net worth clients.

Advanced Planning Group supports you from the moment you decide you want to deliver a holistic menu of services to high net worth clients in order to realize more revenues. We offer:

  • Access to an elite Global Network of Professionals that enables you to offer your top clients a broad array of world-class service
  • Training in the Whole Client Model discovery process
  • Exhaustive, actionable research on high net worth clients' needs
  • Proven marketing strategies for reaching high net worth clients
  • Top-quality communications and support

We also offer the following services as needed:

  • Coaching you through client discovery sessions
  • Transparent compensation reporting
  • A proprietary client case management platform using a secure web-based suite

Advanced Planning Group and its principals have studied the affluent market for more than two decades. The facts show that most advisors have some high net worth clients (net worth of $5 million or more) but many of these clients go underserved, or even un-served entirely. There are many reasons for this:

  • Clients may not let their advisor know the entirety of their assets
  • Advisors may not have had the opportunity to do a complete fact-finding analysis of their top clients' financial lives
  • Clients have become wealthy--through an inheritance, or proceeds from the sale of a business, for example--without informing their advisor.

Even if you have already established relationships with one or more high net worth clients, you may not have the support or experience to address all aspects of their advanced planning needs, including:

  • Wealth enhancement, such as customized capital markets solutions, hedge funds and private equity and other alternative investments
  • Wealth transfer, including the latest in high net worth tax and estate planning
  • Asset protection, including cutting-edge insurance and security strategies
  • Charitable planning, including foundation development

Advanced Planning Group supports advisors who want to do more for their top clients.

From the moment you decide you want to increase revenues by delivering more for your top clients, Advanced Planning Group can help make the process comprehensive, efficient and successful. Through our workshop training, case consultations and performance partnerships (see "How We Work" below), Advanced Planning Group provides a proven, turn-key, private wealth platform, including access to an elite Global Network of Professionals. Our broad array of services includes:

  • Workshops
    • Research on the affluent
    • High net worth client discovery meetings
    • Compensation arrangements
    • Marketing and sales support
  • Case Consultation
    • Access worldwide specialists about specific cases
  • Performance Partnership
    • Access the entire Advanced Planning Group platform for your high net worth clients--at no cost.

Advanced Planning Group is your support network for serving your high net worth clients with excellence.

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Who We Are

For more than two decades the professionals behind Advanced Planning Group have worked with advisors to help them leverage the growth in affluence worldwide. Our principals have been the industry's leading innovators in wealth management and the consultative process for private wealth worldwide. Through industry books and leading periodicals such as The Wall Street Journal, we've provided thought leadership and actionable guidance to advisors and the institutions that serve advisors using technology, research, training, coaching and collaboration partnering.

ADVANCED PLANNING GROUP PRINCIPALS are made up of experts in areas of asset enhancement, asset protection, wealth transfer, charitable planning and high net worth client management. APG was formed in 2006 to serve a growing need for advisors whose top clients have needs that are extremely complex.

Lewis Schiff was a founding principal of CEG Worldwide. Schiff helped to design one of the leading training programs for advisors targetting and servicing the high-net-worth. Schiff has developed marketing program for scores of advisors targetting the affluent throughout the U.S. Schiff is a columnist for Investment Advisor magazine and writes a blog for InvestmentAdvisor.com. Schiff has been a long-time expert on personal financial matters as a contributing columnist to CNN and Money magazine and the author of The Armchair Millionaire. Schiff is currently writing The Middle-Class Millionaire: How the Influence of Affluence is Transforming America and The Five Client Solution: Increase Revenues, Not Costs.

Russ Alan Prince is internationally recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on the private wealth industry. In addition to being a founding principal of CEG Worldwide, Prince is a columnist for Financial Advisor, Private Wealth and Elite Traveler. He is frequently quoted in the leading media as an authority on the private wealth industry, including in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, American Banker, Pensions & Investments, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Institutional Investor and numerous other publications. Prince is also the author or coauthor of 34 professional development books on financial industry matters. Some of these titles include Inside the Family Office, Advanced Planning with the Ultra Affluent, The Private Client Lawyer and Wealth Management. Prince is currently writing, along with Lewis Schiff, The Middle-Class Millionaire: How the Influence of Affluence is Transforming America.

Global Network of Professionals

Advanced Planning Group has developed an elite network of leading practitioners in high net worth wealth management. Members of this network come from the fields of insurance, international and domestic law, credit and merchant banking, investment banking and customized financial solutions. In addition, our expertise extends to non-traditional financial areas, including physical asset protection, art collectibles management and appraisal and business succession planning.

More on our Global Network of Professionals here.

Each member of Advanced Planning Group's Global Network of Professionals is deeply committed to the Advanced Planning Group mission. Each are leaders in their field and work exclusively with the high net worth and advisors who serve the high net worth.

Some examples of work done by Advanced Planning Group's Global Network of Professionals include:

  • The purchase of life insurance at a 50% discount or more (use of money basis) by employing a self-financing strategy
  • The use of special purpose entities to secure credit at highly favorable rates
  • Tax arbitrage strategies that can mitigate income, estate and capital gains taxes
  • Estate freezing strategies such as intentionally defective trusts, series grantor retained annuity trusts and cascading derivatives
  • The use of captive insurance companies to mitigate risks as well as enhance the personal wealth of the client
  • The valuation and purchase of artwork at auction

Advanced Planning Group and its Global Network of Professionals share a commitment to these core principles:

  • Advisors know what their clients need
  • Advanced Planning Group's role is to support and strengthen the relationship between advisors their clients
  • Conflicts of interest are to be scrupulously avoided
  • Costs do matter
  • The only appropriate solutions are ones that enhance the end-client's life and personal wealth

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How We Work

Advanced Planning Group is an industry resource for advisors who want to serve their high net worth clients more fully and increase revenues without increasing costs.

We are often contacted by advisors who realize they have a need to serve a client more fully than they have been. Sometimes an advisor plans to move up-market and wants to run a pilot on an existing client before they make the leap.

We are your support network. We begin working with advisors by conducting a discovery interview. Your timelines, your knowledge of your top clients and your firm's existing resources and relationships are all mapped out before we begin. Just as you want to become your client's "problem-solver," Advanced Planning Group wants to be yours. Once we understand your opportunity, we develop a plan to help you identify a course of action.

How we structure the relationship with advisors: For some advisors, a single workshop or case consultation is all they need to put their plan into action. Others need access to a turn-key private wealth platform. We work in both capacities - as an as-needed coaching staff, or as a dedicated partner. We call this second option a "Performance Partnership." Beginning with client discovery, through the identification of experts, to client presentation and case management and finally to transparent compensation reporting, this process can be repeated, as needed for each top client you have. For complete details on Performance Partnerships, click here.

Who our clients are: Advanced Planning Group's ideal client is an advisor who has one or more high net worth clients and wants to deliver more value to those clients and increase revenues for the firm, but doesn't have access to private wealth specialists to support the needs of their high net worth clients.

Why advisors turn to us: Advisors rely on us for the direct access we provide to industry-renowned principals through our Global Network of Professionals as well as our expertise in co-managing the high net worth client and transparent compensation reporting. Advisors may have access to similar resources through a financial partner, such as a broker or a product provider, but seek the experience and independence Advanced Planning Group provides.

Our fees: Advanced Planning Group can be accessed directly by advisors or through a participating financial partner or institution. In some cases, advisors pay a fee to participate in a workshop and case consultations. There is no charge to the advisor for our comprehensive Performance Partnerships. There is no charge to the advisor for the strategic planning provided in the Discovery Interview.

Based on your needs, assessed after our Discovery Interview, the following is a table of common services advisors choose.

Workshops:

At your firm

  • 1-day long
  • Topics covered:
    • Research on the affluent
    • The whole client discovery process
    • Individual case consultations
    • Solutioning for high net worth clients
    • Compensation

FEES: Call for price based on location and number of participants

Public

  • Monthly in regional centers in the U.S.
  • 1-day long
  • Topics covered:
    • Research on the affluent
    • The whole client discovery process
    • Individual case consultations
    • Solutioning for high net worth clients
    • Compensation

FEES: $395* for day-long workshop and follow up case consultation.

Fees are 100% rebated if the advisor successfully enters into a Performance Partnership

Case Consultations

  • Telephone and web document-sharing
  • Length as needed (typically 1 hour)
  • Services provided:
    • Pre-call interviews
    • Agenda development
    • Expert selection
    • Call scheduling
    • Call transcribing and summary reporting

FEES: $800 and up

Performance Partnerships

Performance Partnerships are established when both the advisor and Advanced Planning Group mutually agree to pursue a high net worth client opportunity together.

Services included in all Performance Partnerships (as needed):

  • Collaboration on client discovery
  • Client discovery analysis and reporting
  • Duration-of-case management by an Advanced Planning Group principal and support teams
  • Case tracking and reporting platform (secure web-based)
  • Expert selection
  • Expert case consultation
  • Expert-advisor meeting scheduling and materials distribution (secure web-based)
  • Co-presentation to client (as requested by advisor/client)
  • Transparent compensation reporting

FEES: There are no fees to the advisor to establish a Performance Partnership. Advisor receives 50% of all fees generated from case that can be legally shared.

Once we've mutually agreed to initiate a Performance Partnership together, we've made it easy and convenient to get started:

  • Meet your Advanced Planning Group Private Wealth principal
  • Participate in a launch meeting to define objectives and agree on a schedule.
  • Our Guarantees to Our Clients

Advanced Planning Group holds client service in the highest regard. We offer the following guarantees to each of our clients.

We guarantee that we will:

  • Make an exceptional effort to understand and define in considerable detail your unique needs.
  • Create a comprehensive roadmap that includes enough options to insure that the plan is tailor-made to your particular needs.
  • Act according to the highest professional ethics in working with advisors.
  • Hold regular progress meetings and briefings with each of our Performance Partners, quarterly or as desired.
  • Meet our promised deadlines.
  • Return calls promptly.
  • Be genuinely interested in our clients' well-being and the well-being of their clients.

We encourage our advisors to let us know if we ever don't live up to their expectation in any way so we can correct any problem and develop procedures to prevent it from occurring in the future.

To learn more about Performance Partnerships, a way to increase revenues at no cost to you, click here

To contact a private wealth specialist, click here.